Lyudmila Lyashchenko moved from Mariupol to Krasny Lyman in 2011.
She used to work as a paramedic on an ambulance, but after moving she began to make herbal preparations for local sanatoriums.
When the woman and her 19-year-old daughter Yulia once again went to the forest for herbs and berries, they encountered the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
“At five in the morning I go out into the forest to my place, and there are a bunch of tanks, soldiers in black uniforms, with large tents.
These were Ukrainian soldiers of the 95th airmobile brigade, ”Lashchenko recalled in a conversation with RT.
- They sternly addressed us that I speak Russian.
She began to speak their Western Ukrainian.
They checked the documents and said to go home, because there are already stretch marks in the forest.
“Thorns” hung between the trees, and grenades were on them.
According to the woman, the same detachment later advanced on Krasny Liman.
“They fired at the city, knocked out the militia.
Their projectile hit the hospital, where the most experienced surgeon in the city performed the operation.
The doctor died.
They occupied Liman and began to wool everything there, ”said Lyudmila.
© Photo from personal archive
Subsequently, the woman began to help the militias and give them information about the soldiers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
Since Krasny Liman is a large strategic military railway station, the DPR army was interested in how many trains were there, as well as their contents, Lyashchenko explained.
“I was engaged in the collection of military intelligence in favor of the DNR.
My call sign was Anna.
The guys were interested in everything: in what form the military - shaved, unshaven, what kind of berets they had, what mood, - she recalled.
“They told me to call and hang up the call every two minutes, because from the second minute it will already be recorded.”
Lyudmila Lyashchenko helped the militias from June to the end of November 2014, until strong men in military uniforms and balaclavas broke into her house.
The woman recalled that everything happened instantly: she only had time to see how some shadows flashed by the windows - and the next moment her door was already knocked out.
“There were five or six of them.
They put guns to my temples for me and my daughter.
They began to search the house - they tore everything, scattered cereals, and broke dishes.
They didn’t even let us get dressed: they put bags on our heads, put on handcuffs and took us straight out in what we were, ”said Lyashchenko.
torture
Lyudmila was brought to the basement, where, according to her, "the smell of decaying corpses."
As Lyashchenko recalled, her daughter was immediately taken away somewhere, and she herself began to be interrogated: who did she work for, what did she pass on to the militia, what are the names of those to whom she reported information, how to lure out her commander.
“This was accompanied by blows to the head, to the ribs.
They took the left hand forward, and hit the ribs with the butt of an ax.
So I broke three ribs.
They beat me on the head, since then I began to hear badly.
I was also left without a single tooth, ”Ludmila listed.
“Sometimes they took off the bag, and I saw in front of me three military men in balaclavas, a long table, which was lined with three-liter jars of honey.
My kidnappers said that they took this honey from someone who was detained just like me, ”she said.
According to the woman, she was shown printouts of all her calls, which, as it turned out, were recorded from the very first second.
Lyashchenko was also advised to tell everything that is known about the militias: “They told me to hand over everything, because I am already 15 years old.
I was 49 at the time. Maybe I wouldn’t have gotten out of prison by now.”
In a conversation with RT, Lyudmila also recalled how, between interrogations, she was placed against the backdrop of the Ukrainian flag and forced to say on camera “what a good Ukraine”, call herself a traitor and “blame the deenerovtsy and Muscovites”.
As a result, they brought her daughter to the room where they interrogated and tortured Lyudmila and told them to say goodbye.
“I told Yulia to pay for gas and utilities.
And she was pretty rough with me.
It was only later that I realized why: the SBU read her testimony to me,” Lyashchenko said.
“After that, she was taken to the field, she went home by herself to the noise of cars.”
Prison
A few days after that meeting with her daughter, Lyudmila was transferred to Poltava.
According to the woman, she was put "jack" in the trunk with some man - as she assumed, also detained by the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
She recalled the road with a shudder: “I had to cope with the needs of the military, who watched and neighed.
Hands in handcuffs, it’s impossible to take off your pants or put them on normally.”
As Lyashchenko said, she was kept in a damp tiny cell in the basements of the SBU.
“I felt so bad (chest hurt) that I lay down on the floor of this room, and everyone stepped over me,” she said.
According to Lyudmila, the investigator spoke to her in Russian.
After interrogation, the woman was placed in a temporary detention center - a room with two beds.
There was no glass in the only huge window, and since it was December outside, it was “terribly cold,” Lyashchenko said.
According to Lyudmila, a couple of days after the interrogation, the investigator held a trial.
The woman was provided with a lawyer, but she decided to defend herself in Ukrainian.
“In the courtroom, the investigator squeamishly asked me to get away from her.
I asked: “What, it stinks?”
But the judge was a pleasant woman, we communicated well with her, ”Lashchenko said about that process.
Lyudmila was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
The prison cell, according to her, was designed for ten people: “I was the tenth.
The girls found out that I was a doctor, and treated me normally, even offered sweets.
The main one immediately told me to feed, drink, make a bed.
And the guards looked into the cell and shouted at us: “Separatugs!”
The woman recalls that her cellmates said: she was lucky that the Poltava battalion arrested her, because, according to them, if Lyudmila fell into the hands of the Aidar, Donbass or Azov fighters, she would already be dead.
Exchange in the DNR
Lyudmila Lyashchenko spent a month in prison.
All this time, she kept a diary, where one could find such entries: “I saw a louse”, “Raised a brawl”, “I saw a cockroach”, “Transferred to the medical unit”.
Two days before 2015, as Lyudmila said, she and other prisoners were taken to one of the sports halls in Poltava for an exchange of prisoners of war.
“The next day we were picked up at four in the morning and taken by bus through Kharkov to Donetsk.
We were accompanied by the OSCE.
When the buses stopped and we were changed back and forth, the employees looked at us so disgustedly!
Lyashchenko said.
“When we finally got on the DPR bus, the handcuffs were removed from me, and the young soldiers said: “Mother, you are in your homeland, congratulations.”
The released prisoners of war, including Lyudmila, were first settled in a hostel at Donetsk University.
There Lyashchenko lived for a month in a room on the 14th floor.
“New, 2015, we met under shelling.
We saw these “chandeliers”, and once I saw the explosion of “Tochka-U” - a terrible sight, she said.
They helped me with my treatment.
They made me the upper jaw, the lower - later, already in Russia.
The ribs were cured, the broken vertebra was restored.
Lyudmila was offered to leave for Russia in the same year.
At first she lived in a temporary accommodation center in Taganrog, and when it was closed after some time, she began to rent a room on her own - the woman had no relatives in the Russian Federation, she was periodically helped by volunteers and caring citizens.
According to her, she did not plan to return to Ukraine: “My homeland betrayed me: she mocked me and threw me out.
I was betrayed by my daughter, my relatives and friends.
I have forgiven my daughter.
We have not spoken since then, but recently she called and said that I became a grandmother.
And I replied that if she could evacuate, I would share a corner and a piece of bread.”
The woman failed to obtain Russian citizenship in eight years: during the exchange of prisoners, she was given only a copy of the Ukrainian passport.
With him, she was unable to obtain a DPR passport in order to subsequently apply for citizenship.
“The FMS inspector wrote inquiries to the DPR, but my commander died, and no one else knew me.
She made a request for documents to Mariupol, but there was no answer.
I only have an asylum in Russia, and this is not enough to take a mortgage on housing, apply for a pension or disability benefits, ”said Lyashchenko.
Despite everything, the woman said that she did not regret her help to the DPR militia: “Bandera’s people want power in Ukraine.
They want land: in 2014 they removed black soil with buckets and took it abroad.
They needed free resources: they mined shale gas, they removed our forests.
I didn't want this to happen."
The search for a daughter
For the past eight years, Lyashchenko has worked as a nurse for the seriously ill, although she herself was in dire need of care.
She already suffered from kidney failure and diabetes, and the torture caused irreparable harm to her health.
In the tenth of July, Lyudmila fell at home, the neighbors called an ambulance, Ilya Pirogov, a volunteer from Taganrog, who had recently helped a woman, told RT.
She was hospitalized in critical condition.
Doctors diagnosed sepsis.
It was not possible to save Lyudmila.
The issue of funerals is now being resolved.
© Photo from personal archive
RT and volunteers are trying to find Lyashchenko's daughter Yulia Parkhomenko. If you have information about Yulia's whereabouts, please email us at ne1na1@rttv.ru